Windows 8.1 update 3 in the works - adds Start Menu / Windows 9 Delayed

If I had a tablet that was x86 I might be tempted but since I do not, and I doubt some one will give me a free one, well...

 

Apple can give away OS X because they also sell the hardware, which has a built-in margin for the OS cost. Apple is a hardware company, their software is basically marketing material for the hardware. Everything is designed to work in tandem.

Microsoft has no such relationship. The closest thing they have to their own stuff is the Surface Pro, which I don't think is a cash cow. Windows and Office is how Microsoft makes a lot of their money. MS has to keep hoping the Lenovos and Dells make hardware people want, so they can get Windows as a ride-along. When Lenovo pulls a "let's screw with the trackpoint buttons" move, that hurts Microsoft.

 

Would it really matter if MS sold Windows 9 for $30 at retail shops? I would imagine the large majority of licenses are OEM/volume licenses that are heavily discounted, probably less than $30(no idea how much HP/Dell pays per license). The people that buy Windows retail probably buy the OEM version for like $100 instead of $300 for the "full version", and I would say they are a very small minority of the total user. Then you have the people that use Windows but never pay for it, regardless of the price (a pretty significant percentage of the total user I would say).

Update: I broke down and installed classic shell. Search results kept defaulting to metro version of apps and I didn't want to perform extra steps to search desktop apps via the "Run" prompt every time I needed to use the calculator (yeah I can make a shortcut to calc.exe but then I'd have to pin a whole bunch of stuff and clutter up the taskbar). I suppose I could pin the desktop calculator to the overlaid start menu(thank goodness the metro start is not fullblown in 8.1) but I got lazy Overall, everything is still there and it takes about the same or less clicks to access. The biggest problem I see is that instead of unifying the UI, MS made it fragmented because Metro and desktop gave you different levels of access so I need to use both. Why right I right click on a Metro tile and get the same options as the desktop one?

 

I predict 9 will be a suckfest, seeing how the rumored kernel version is still 6.x. I only upgraded to 8 b/c 7 ran my apps slow as hell. I thought that 8 would be an internal-under-the-hood departure from 7.

Then, I found out after the fact that 8 was still running on kernel 6.x, a minor revision from 7's... 8 only boots up fast. I can't get over the fact that kernel 6.2/6.3 suck way worse than 6.1 when you want high fps in games!

It's possible I might just complete skip 9.

Still waiting for a Windows version where Microsoft does the kernel right (runs apps at full potential). Their last good kernel version was 5.1 (where I can get 8x the fps than in kernel 6.2/6.3). So, assuming my hardware will last that long, you can guess which OS I'll be sticking with for at least the next 5-15 years (if Microsoft does not get their act together and come up with a kernel worthy of being 5.1's successor!)

 

You have no clue what you are talking about, don't you?
Microsoft always adds just 1/10th to the kernel version for last 8 years since Vista! Don't pretend you are smart if you are not.

 

I can say the same about you. Don't pretend that you've got a clue if you've never worked on the kernel b4, let alone being employed by MS. Bottom line is results speak for themselves, and kernel 6.x just destroys fps over 5.1! When will they get it right again? Maybe in kernel version 7.x or 8.x. But until then, I can't see myself upgrading my hardware nor OS! I'm pratically future-proof for the next 5-15 years b/c I have my kernel version 5.1 for everything else that needs speed, except the upcoming IE12 which is all Windows7/8 is really good for...

 

WAT???!

I don't need to work at Microsoft to slap you with this picture



Windows 8 is not working on a Kernel " minor revision from 7 because it has 6.X same as Seven". I repeat last time: Microsoft uses same 6.X numbers since Vista and probably gonna use it for a very long time.

You could just say that you use Windows XP and believe that since then Microsoft has never done any OS which actually is real faster and not just optimized for new hardware/features. That would be true and simple. But you started telling all that crap acting like a Pro. Sad looking. Very sad.

 

Are you implying that you're a software engineer at Microsoft working on Windows kernel design?

 

There has been no evidence that the Win7 Kernel or Win8 Kernel is any worse (or really any better) than the WinXP Kernel when it comes to gaming.
Indeed, due to driver improvements, 7 and 8 have a bit of a lead.

If you still think XP is that much better, find us some benchmarks (from 2012 and beyond) that support your statement. Frankly people whined and complained and eventually stopped when Win7 was equaling or beating XP in nearly every benchmark due to driver development finally catching up. Win 8 is just slight changes in Win7's underpinnings... Win8 even has some advantages in some games.

HARDOCP - Conclusion - Battlefield 4 Windows 7 vs. 8.1 Performance Review

Given XP's lack of official support, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone as a main OS.

 

KernalPanic has it right. As a personal example, I installed Windows 7 on my last computer because it was faster than Windows XP. I have no idea how anyone can say game performance was 8x better on XP without data to back that up. While it is true that XP uses considerably less system resources than newer versions, that does not by default translate into better performance. If it did, we'd all still be using Windows 95 or 3.1 since they have such a low overhead.

 

Windows 7 and 8 manage memory and system resources so much more efficiently than XP. XP was a great OS, just it's been outdated and replaced with much more refined OS. I had my love affair with XP too, and especially after upgrading to Vista and the headaches that ensued, I promptly went back to XP. And then memory limitations forced me to move to 7 for 64-bit OS supoprt and I was quite impressed.

 

I think, and again this is relying on a failing memory, back in the day of conversion to the 6.x kernels that 16 bit and or DOS box emulation games took a hit on FPS. Not that they went below 60FPS but were no longer at like 500 FPS. This came from the fact that no longer could the hardware take direct access, or control, of the video and audio hardware. A lot of the tricks used by 3D engines were just no longer allowed so even some older original games designed for XP kernel took a hit, and again they were playable just not at 500 FPS or so.

 

I don't know that was ever the case. I think a lot of that had to do with how the DOS games were timed to the system ticks and newer processors would just run WAY too fast for the DOS games that it made them unplayable so the solution was more or less to change the tick so it was playable.

 

I don't remember an unplayable game, Again not a major game player though. Back in the earlier days I played more but that was Win 3.1 and Win 95 days. I do remember about the direct hardware access issue as it even made some older games incompatible without a true drop out to dos (essentially dual boot). Again stretching memory but this was an issue on some older games with Windows ME as windows was no longer a shell of DOS but DOS was a shell of windows.

Although short lived I liked WinME. It worked fine for me. I, like a lot of others, switched over to Windows XP once it became available because of the true NT core. This is the first UI from the Windows line I have disliked. Going back on topic I am hoping Windows 9 will entice me to like the UI but I have little faith at the moment.

 

Wow, I think you're the first person I have ever heard say they liked WinMe.

 

It's not even just DOS games. Unreal (1998) was the same way, and since the game engine physics were tied to the frame rate, it would run at light speed unless you limited the FPS.

 

My first notebook computer ran Windows ME. It worked okay when it wasn't churning out errors at startup (which sadly occurred on a regular basis).

 

My first desktop PC ran ME (the first one that was mine, as opposed to shared by the whole family) - I remember how proud I was to have a processor running at 1 GHz. Come to think of it, I was also really proud of upgrading it from 512MB of RAM to 768MB (or something like that).

 

I think the trick here was having no real issues with it. While it was a handful at times if you understood its quirks it was fine. The UI was not a deal breaker, at least for me.

 

The UI was fine, but it wasn't the stablest thing around, for sure.


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